IR

Social Constructivism
Introduction
● Beginning in the 1980s, constructivism has been becoming an increasingly
significant approach,especially in North American IR
● The historical context (i.e., the end of the Cold War) and the theoretical
discussion between IR scholars (especially among neorealists and liberals)
helped set the stage for a constructivist approach
● Constructivism became especially popular among North American scholars,
because that environment was dominated by the neorealist/neoliberal
approaches
● In Europe, the International Society approach had already to a significant
extent included the role of ideas and the importance of social interaction
between states in their analysis
Continued
● Constructivists were inspired by theoretical developments in other social
science disciplines, including philosophy and sociology
● In sociology, Anthony Giddens (1984) proposed the concept of structuration
as a way of analysing the relationship between structures and actors
● According to Giddens, structures (i.e., the rules and conditions that guide
social action) do not determine what actors do in any mechanical way
● Structures do constrain actors, but actors can also transform structures by
thinking about them and acting on them in new ways
● IR constructivists use this as a starting point for suggesting a less rigid view of
anarchy.
Historical Roots
● It also grows out of an old methodology that can be traced back at least to the
eighteenth-century writings of the Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico
● According to Vico, the natural world is made by God, but the historical world is
made by Man
● History is not some kind of unfolding or evolving process that is external to
human affairs
● Men and women make their own history
● They also make states which are historical constructs. States are artificial
creations and the state system is artificial too; it is made by men and women
and if they want to, they can change it and develop it in new ways
Continued
● Immanuel Kant is another forerunner of social constructivism
● Kant argued that we can obtain knowledge about the world, but it will always
be subjective knowledge in the sense that it is filtered through human
consciousness
● Max Weber emphasized that the social world (i.e., the world of human
interaction) is fundamentally different from the natural world of physical
phenomena
● Human beings rely on ‘understanding’ of each other’s actions and assigning
‘meaning’ to them
● Weber concluded that ‘subjective understanding is the specific characteristic
of sociological knowledge’
Constructivism as a Social Theory
● Constructivists emphasize the social construction of reality
● Human relations, including international relations, consist of thoughts and
ideas and not essentially of material conditions or forces
● According to constructivist philosophy, the social world is not a given: it is not
● something ‘out there’ that exists independently of the thoughts and ideas of
the people involved in it
● It is not an external reality whose laws can be discovered by scientific
research and explained by scientific theory, as positivists and behaviourists
argue
● There are no natural laws of society or economics or politics
Continued
● Sociology or economics or political science or the study of history cannot be
objective ‘sciences’ in the strict positivist sense of the word
● Everything involved in the social world of men and women is made by them
● The social world is a world of human consciousness: of thoughts and beliefs,
of ideas and concepts, of languages and discourses, of signs, signals, and
understandings among human beings, especially groups of human beings,
such as states and nations
● Materialism is a part of constructivism;But it is the ideas and beliefs
concerning those entities that are most important
● The physical element is secondary to the intellectual element which infuses it
with meaning, plans it, organizes it, and guides it
Ideas
● Intersubjective beliefs (and ideas, conceptions, and assumptions) that are
widely shared among people.
● Ideas must be widely shared to matter;
● Nonetheless they can be held by different groups, such as organizations,
policymakers, social groups, or society.
● ‘Ideas are mental constructs held by individuals, sets of distinctive beliefs,
principles and attitudes that provide broad orientations for behaviour and
policy’
● Ideologies or shared belief systems,
● Normative beliefs,
● Cause–effect beliefs and
● Policy prescriptions’
Truth and Power
● Constructivists reject the notion of objective truth; social scientists cannot
discover a ‘final truth’ about the world which is true across time and place.
● Constructivists do make ‘truth claims about the subjects they have
investigated . . . while admitting that their claims are always contingent and
partial interpretations of a complex world’
● ‘Critical’ or ‘post-positivist’ constructivists argue that ‘truth claims’ are not
possible because there is no neutral ground where we can decide about what
is true
● What we call truth is always connected to different, more or less dominant,
ways of thinking about the world
Continued
● Truth and power cannot be separated; indeed, the main task of critical
constructivism is to unmask that core relationship between truth and power
● Criticize those dominant versions of thinking that claim to be true for all
Constructivist Theories of International Relations
● Constructivism was introduced to IR by Nicholas Onuf (1989), who coined the
term
● Cultures of Anarchy
● Norms of International Society
● The Power of International Organizations
● A Constructivist Approach to European Cooperation
● Domestic Formation of Identity and Norms
Cultures of Anarchy
● Rejection of the neorealist position,according to which anarchy must
necessarily lead to self-help
● This cannot be decided a priori; it depends on the interaction between states
● In these processes of interaction the identities and interests of states are
created.
● What specific ‘culture of anarchy’ has developed between States can be
found out if we study their interactions
● Three Cultures of Anarchy - Hobbesian, Lockean, and Kantian
● Material power and state interest are fundamentally formed by ideas and
social interaction
● Social interaction between states can also lead to more benign and friendly
cultures of anarchy
Norms of International Society
● State behaviour is defined by identity and interest
● Identity and interests are defined by international forces, that is, by the norms
of behaviour embedded in international society
● The norms of international society are transmitted to states through
international organizations
● They shape national policies by ‘teaching’ states what their interests should
be
● Eg: acceptance by developing world states of poverty alleviation as a central
norm of economic policy propelled by World Bank
● International norms promoted by international organizations can decisively
influence national guidelines by pushing states to adopt these norms in their
national policies
The Power of International Organizations
● Traditional realist view of international organizations (IOs) emphasizes that they exist to
carry out important functions for states
● But Constructivists believe that IOs are much more important and should not be reduced to
handmaidens of states
● They are autonomous actors who might exercise power in their own right; on the other
hand, they ‘construct the social world in which cooperation and choice takes place
● They help define the interests that states and other actors come to hold
● IOs have compulsory power in that they control material resources that can be used to
influence others
● Institutional power of IOs stems from their ability to guide behaviour in more indirect ways
● Finally, productive power refers to the role of IOs in constituting the problems that need to
be solved
A Constructivist Approach to European Cooperation
● Foreign policy cooperation is not simply the product of national interests; it is
due to processes of social interaction
● Social interaction builds intersubjective structures that help further
cooperation
● In other words, EU Member States may not agree on important aspects of
foreign policy; but in spite of this, day-to-day practices of political cooperation
significantly promote a shaping of common perspectives and mutual
coordination
Domestic Formation of Identity and Norms
● Systemic constructivists such as Finnemore and Wendt stress the importance
of the international environment in shaping state identities
● Other constructivists put more emphasis on the domestic environment
● One way of moving in this direction is to study how international norms have
dissimilar effects in different states and then speculate about the domestic
factors responsible for such variation
Criticism
● Neorealists are sceptical about the importance that constructivists attach to
norms, in particular international norms
● At the same time, neorealists are not ready to accept that states can easily
become friends due to their social interaction
● Problem of uncertainty
● Some Marxists are critical of constructivism
● Wallerstein’s world system theory focuses
● on the material structure of global capitalism and its development since the
sixteenth century That analysis leaves little room for the social interaction
analysed by constructivists